Re: [soa-rm-ra] The multiple overlapping senses of joint action.

[Francis McCabe <fmccabe@gmail.com>]

Ken
  I was NOT addressing trust in the write up on joint action.

  I think that there are genuinely two different notions of action:  
the action that individual actors perform (including cutting down  
trees) and the actions that they perform severally.

  I think that getting clarity about the relationship between  
communicative actions and service actions is extremely beneficial.  
Seeing the two side-by-side as it were solves an important  
architectural problem. I admit that I fail to see why you cannot see  
that.

  Remember that the purpose of interacting with services is to get  
things done. But, as anyone who attends a lot of meetings will  
understand, talking about solving problems is not the same thing as  
actually solving them.

Frank

On Jul 21, 2009, at 6:28 AM, Laskey, Ken wrote:

> Frank,
>
> Two points here: one for a clarification and the other still  
> questioning the necessity of the elaboration.
>
> First, if I cut down a tree, is there a joint action?  There is  
> certainly a real world effect.
>
> I use this as my "action" scenario in order to avoid messages.   
> Message exchange seems to always require joint action -- the speaker  
> and the listener -- for anything to get done.  The message exchange  
> is by construction a joint action, and all the other levels of  
> intent you mention often get masked.
>
> The concept of an action meant for different purposes is critical  
> for trust because the question comes down to whether the individual  
> intent of the parties will likely lead to acceptable RWEs, even if  
> the intents are somewhat different.
>
> This leads me to the second point: what of all this is required to  
> tell the story for the RA?  Interaction is made up of joint actions,  
> but when is it not sufficient to talk about interaction?  We seem to  
> do quite well in section 4, although it will take a bit of effort to  
> reconstruct what Jeff and I decided when we first had the action to  
> tackle this.  As for trust, the initial write-up I did seemed to  
> capture more than some folks felt necessary, and it made no mention  
> of joint action.
>
> One of our principles is parsimony.  I understand, although I still  
> have a few questions on, your elaboration of joint action.  The  
> question is whether this is the most parsimonious way to tell the  
> story.  Of more concern, will anyone not part of our discussion  
> understand it?
>
> Ken
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Francis McCabe [fmccabe@gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 12:33 AM
> To: soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org RA
> Subject: [soa-rm-ra] The multiple overlapping senses of joint action.
>
> A joint action is a coordinated set of actions involving the efforts
> of two or more actors to achieve an effect
>
> In any social context joint actions abound: people talking to each
> other, people buying and selling, people arranging their lives. In
> addition, joint action is at the heart of interactions within the
> context of a SOA ecosystem.
>
> There is another sense in which joint actions abound: even within a
> single incident of interaction there are typically several overlapping
> joint actions.
>
> For example, when one person says to another: "it is stuffy in here"
> there is an immediate sense in which there is a joint action -- a
> joint communicative action. The intended effect being that the
> listener believes that the speaker intends him to understand that the
> speaker believes that the atmosphere is uncomfortable. (The listener
> may also believe that the atmosphere *is* uncomfortable as a result of
> the communication.)
>
> However, in the right context, there may be another joint action: the
> apparent declaration may in fact be a command.  The intent being that
> the speaker wishes the listener to understand that the door should be
> opened.
>
> There may be a further layer to this scenario: the speaker might be
> aware that there is someone who is waiting to be let in. The command
> to open the door is actually a command to admit the visitor to the  
> room.
>
> Fundamentally all three of these senses of joint action are
> superimposed on top of each other. However, there is a strong sense in
> which the different joint actions may be quite interchangeable. For
> example, instead of declaring that the "room is stuffy", the speaker
> might have simply said "open the door". Or the speaker might have said
> "please let John in". In each case the effect would have been the same
> -- modulo the sensitivities of the speaker and listener -- the door
> being open and the visitor admitted to the room.
>
> The relationship between the communicative joint action: the utterance
> of the declaration and the command joint action is a `uses'
> relationship. The speaking joint action is used to convey the command
> joint action; which in turn is used to convey the visitor admittance
> action.
>
> In many situations the best predicate that describes the relationship
> between these different joint actions is the 'counts as' predicate.
> The utterance action counts as the command to open the door. The
> command to open the door counts as the request to admit the visitor.
>
> It can be extremely useful to identify and separate the different
> overlapping senses of joint action. It allows us to separately
> describe and process the communicative actions from the command joint
> actions. This, in turn, reflects the fact that each layer has its own
> logic and ontology.
>
> For example, at the utterance level, the issues are to do with the
> successful understanding of the content of the communication -- did
> the listener hear and understand the words, did the speaker intend to
> say them, and so on.
>
> At the level of the command to open the door, the issues center on
> whether there is a predisposition on the part of the listener to obey
> commands given to him by the speaker.
>
> In the context of a SOA ecosystem we can separately capture the logic
> and mechanics of what is involved in electronic communication -- the
> sending of messages, the security of the communication and so on; from
> the logic and mechanics of command -- does the listener believe that
> the speaker has the appropriate authority to issue the command.
>
> As with human communication, electronic interactions are similarly
> interchangeable: the commitment to purchase a book requires some form
> of communication between buyer and seller; but the purchase action
> itself is unchanged by the use of email or an HTTP post of an XML
> document.
>
> In summary, the concept of joint action allows us to honor the fact
> that both parties in an interaction are required for there to be an
> actual effect; it allows us to separate out the different levels of
> the interaction into appropriate semantic layers; and it allows us to
> recombine those layers in potentially different ways whilst still
> achieving the intended real world effects of action in a SOA  
> ecosystem.
>
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